"Will you swear that it was the Duchess who got into the carriage outside Cane and Wilson's?"
Barnes began to stammer:
"I--I'll swear, your Grace, that I--I thought----"
The Duke stormed an interruption:
"I don't ask what you thought. I ask you, will you swear it was?"
The Duke's anger was more than Barnes could face. He was silent. Moysey showed a larger courage:
"Could have sworn that it was at the time, your Grace. But now it seems to me that it's a rummy go."
"A rummy go!" The peculiarity of the phrase did not seem to strike the Duke just then--at least, he echoed it as if it didn't. "You call it a rummy go! Do you know that I am told in this letter that the woman who had entered the carriage was not the Duchess? What you were thinking about, or what case you will be able to make out for yourselves, you know better than I; but I can tell you this--that in an hour you will leave my service, and you may esteem yourselves fortunate if, to-night, you are not both of you sleeping in gaol. Knowles! take these men to a room, and lock them in it, and set some one to see that they don't get out of it, and come back at once. You understand, at once--to me!"
Knowles did not give Messrs. Barnes and Moysey a chance to offer a remonstrance, even if they had been disposed to do so. He escorted them out of the room with a dexterity and a celerity which did him credit, and in a remarkably short space of time he returned to the ducal presence. He was the Duke's own servant--his own particular man. He was a little older than the Duke, and he had been his servant almost ever since the Duke had been old enough to have a servant of his very own. Probably James Knowles knew more than any living creature of the Duke's "secret history"--as they call it in the chroniques scandaleuses--of his little peculiarities, of his strong points, and his weak ones. And, in the possession of this knowledge, he had borne himself in a manner which had caused the Duke to come to look upon him as a man in whom he might have confidence--that confidence which a penitent has in a confessor--to look upon him as a trusted and a trustworthy friend.
When Knowles reappeared the Duke handed him the curious epistle with which he had been favoured.